Iris Johansen - Dark Summer

"And he experimented on the dogs?"

"Don't say it as if it was a crime," he said sharply. The muscles of his body were suddenly corded and tense, as if ready for battle. "He would never hurt them. Paco liked dogs. He told me once he wondered what they would become if we helped them along a little. He didn't like people nearly as well. He used to say there were few great souls on earth, and so it was best the rest of us weren't around that long to spoil it."

"But you said he'd given people this medicine and healed them."

"I thought he had."

She stared at him in bewilderment.

"It was the dogs. The medicine he gave the patients was a placebo. I told you that he brought me and Ned along on several of the visits. He'd have me take Ned over to the bed and let the patient touch, even pet him if he was able. No one thought much about it. Everyone knows that dogs are taken to hospitals to visit all the time, and they make patients feel better. Purely psychological." He paused. "Or is it?"

"Of course, it is."

"But they're very empathetic, they want desperately to help, to share. If they possessed the power to heal, to share their own health, wouldn't they do it?"

"Hypothetical question. They don't have it."

He was silent a moment. "Ned does. So do Nika, Wiley, and Addie. Paco destroyed the formula and the panacea itself, but it still lived on in the dogs. The dogs are the shi'i'go ."

"I can't believe that."

"I told you it wouldn't be easy."

"You're damn right it's not. You're saying that Ned is some kind of superdog?"

"No, he's very normal." He paused. "Except that he's extremely healthy in every way. He heals with a speed that's remarkable. Something goes wrong within his body, and it manages to overcome and develop instant defenses against it."

Devon couldn't argue with that reality. She had seen it for herself after the shooting. "There are fast healers and slow healers in the normal course of recovery."

"Not like Ned." He shook his head. "Okay, let's go down another path. How old do you think Ned is?"

"Five or six."

"He was four when I started apprenticing with Paco. I was twelve years old. I'm thirty-four now. Do the math."

"You're kidding. That would make him twenty-six years old. Labs almost always die in their early or mid teens." Yet there had been that weird date on that microchip that she had dismissed as a bizarre error.

"Twenty-six and going strong. There's no telling how long Ned could live. There have been no signs of disease in any of the dogs over the years. They show a distinct increase in intelligence and understanding." He added, "And they appear to radiate… an aura… something… that transmits that same health and vitality they possess to those around them."

"How?"

He shook his head. "I don't know. I've been studying the dogs since I rescued them from Danner and I can't come up with an explanation yet. I've had blood tests and biopsies done, but they appear normal except for extreme good health. I've been thinking that maybe the panacea might have affected the gland centers. When you put a flea medicine on an animal, it radiates and repels. It could be that the oil glands are radiating whatever Paco gave them."

"But you can't tell."

"No." His lips thinned, and his dark eyes were suddenly glittering in his taut face. "And I have no intention of chopping those dogs up and putting them under microscopes to try to find out."

She shuddered. "That's what Danner wants to do?"

"Of course. Kill them, autopsy them, and find a way to reproduce the shi'i'go ." He looked straight ahead. "And he wouldn't be alone. They'd be standing in line to get their hands on Ned and the others. All those billions beckoning on the horizon. Even the animal-rights idealists would probably sanction killing them on the grounds that the scientists might discover some wonderful way to benefit humankind. After all, they're only dogs." He said fiercely, "But they're my dogs, and nothing is going to happen to them. Even if I hadn't promised Paco I'd protect them, I couldn't let them die. I'll keep trying to find what's going on with them. I'll give the world what they want or need from those dogs, but no one else is going to touch them."

"Wait a minute." She was trying to put all the pieces together. "If the microchip decoding isn't the formula for this shi'i'go , what is it?"

"The location of all four dogs. For safety's sake, I had to separate them and give them individual guardians. It cut down the danger of having Danner get complete control of the panacea even if he found one dog. I made sure no one knew all the locations but me. I wanted to keep the information always with me, not hidden away where I couldn't control it."

No, Marrok would always have to be the one in control, she thought. The dominant forcefulness he was exuding in this moment was almost tangible. "What if something happened to you?"

"If I was killed, I had to make sure there was a way for the person I chose to manage the care of the dogs to find them. Ned is very strong, always with me, so that I can watch over him, and, if a bullet didn't get him, he'd survive. He was the logical dog to carry the microchip."

"But if Danner didn't know about this microchip, why did he take my computer?"

"That's what I've been asking myself. Perhaps he didn't know; maybe they took the computer just on the chance of finding out more about you and what you knew. But I don't like the odds of that. And how did that shooter on Santa Marina know I was there?" He added softly, "You can bet I intend to find out."

Soft-voiced but everything else about him was hard and sleek and lethal. She recalled that moment in the first-aid tent when she'd realized that safety was out of the question where Marrok was concerned.

"The person you chose to oversee the care for the dogs would know about the microchip. It would be logical to start there. Who is it?"

"Bridget."

That didn't surprise her. "And?"

"I trust her." He waved a hand as she opened her lips. "As much as I trust anyone. I don't have blind faith in anyone these days. Even Bridget doesn't know the locations of all the dogs. I go so far and no farther. But Bridget could have betrayed me a hundred times in the last three years, and it didn't happen."

"I'm not sure I could trust her. She's a little too violent for my taste."

He shrugged. "But then so am I."

She had a sudden memory of something Marrok had told her. "You said once that Danner dealt in promises."

"If he had control of the shi'i'go , do you think he wouldn't sell it to the highest bidder? Health and longevity are commodities that are more valuable than nuclear bombs. Every person, every leader, is vulnerable to the ravages of ill health and death. Whether a dictator lives or dies affects events all over the world. Shi'i'go would be insurance and the ultimate source of power. Danner could at last be God. He was already negotiating under the table with leaders all over the world even before he killed Paco." He added harshly, "But he didn't get a chance to reap any benefits. I took the dogs away from him the night Paco died."

"He already had them?"

He nodded. "I scouted around and found out he was shipping them to one of his experimental labs in the desert to be killed and autopsied." His teeth bared in a tiger's smile. "They never got there. I shot out the tires on the truck and released the dogs. Then I blew up the truck and went after Danner's lab. It was my bad luck that he wasn't there."

He'd blown up the truck and a laboratory and killed how many men that night? She could see in his expression the ferocity he had felt that night of Paco's death. "And you took the dogs under your wing." The phrase was ludicrous when applied to Marrok. It would be like being tucked under the wing of an ea gle with all its power and cruelty. "How many years ago was that?"